Steven Zohn's remarks in the Preface and Acknowledgments preceding his magnificent study remind us that it is difficult to name another composer of Telemann's historical stature ‘who has received so little attention from Anglo-American musicology’ (vii). Although Telemann enjoyed great success during his own lifetime, in terms of the popularity of his music, his reputation waned in the nineteenth century and began to recover only in the mid-1900s. This volume about a composer whose works have been played and loved by so many musicians is therefore most welcome.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when the early music movement began to gather a momentum that saw an unprecedented expansion of interest in baroque music and its performance, editors and publishers supplied an abundance of duets, sonatas, trios, quartets and concertos by Telemann. Much of this music was eminently playable because of the composer's practical knowledge of the instruments for which he wrote. This seemingly endless repertory endeared Telemann to generations of students, amateurs and professional musicians who were all coming to terms with unfamilar musical styles, and often trying out copies of pre-Industrial-Revolution instruments (this was especially the case for wind players). Moreover, this music constantly displayed a delightful humour and great sense of fun, thus proving that Telemann's ability to please players and audiences crossed boundaries of time, culture and place. But information about this composer was difficult to locate. Prefaces to editions and liner notes from the numerous recordings that were then made commercially available were often the only references to be found. The entry on Telemann by A. M. (Alfred Maczewski) published in A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. George Grove (London: Macmillan, 1879–1890), volume 4, 69–70, was dismissive: ‘he originated nothing, but was content to follow the tracks laid down by the old contrapuntal schools of organists, whose ideas and forms he adopted without change’ (69, column 2). This opinion continued to be published in much the same form in subsequent editions (J. A. Fuller Maitland, ed., Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition (London: Macmillan, 1904–1910), with reprints; H. C. Colles, ed., Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, fourth edition (London: Macmillan, 1940); and Eric Blom, ed., Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, fifth edition (London: Macmillan, 1954)), until Martin Ruhnke gave an entirely new evaluation of the composer (together with a worklist) in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), volume 18, 647–659. This article added to an explosion of new information ranging from publication of letters between Telemann and various contemporaries (Briefwechsel: Sämtliche erreichbare Briefe von und an Telemann, ed. Hans Grosse and Hans Rudolf Jung (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, VEB, 1972)), Horace Fitzpatrick's translation into English of Richard Petzoldt's Georg Philipp Telemann (London: E. Benn, 1974) and ongoing publications of his music coming from the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung in the collected editions. Telemann was at last revealed to be no mere Kleinmeister, but a composer of stature.

Zohn now builds upon those foundations by placing Telemann and his instrumental music within the contexts of contemporary European style, genre and meaning. This intensively researched and highly concentrated study is grouped into four principal parts, three of which are concerned with genre (I: ‘The Overture-Suites’; II: ‘The Concertos’; III: ‘The Sonatas’), whilst one is given to Telemann's very important role as a self-publisher and supplier of music to his audience of ‘Kenner und Liebhaber’ (IV: ‘The Hamburg Publications’). Within this greater framework the music is considered in nine chapters, each being further divided into subsections. Abundant music examples and tables enhance the discussions, while references to contemporary literature and poetry, and illustrations and facsimiles, give insights into Telemann's cultural world. The extent of research undertaken for this book is evident in copious footnotes and a comprehensive bibliography. Moreover, the ‘Index of Telemann's Compositions’ (659–666) provides an essential accompaniment to guide the reader through musical items discussed in the text.

Part I (‘The Overture-Suites’) transports the reader beyond the confines of Telemann's German-speaking courts and cities into a wider European world. His musical style was informed by elements ranging from compositions enjoyed in France to the rich and wonderful performance traditions heard in the far-away inns of Eastern Europe. Thus Chapter 1, ‘Acquiring a Mixed Taste’, is subtitled ‘Telemann as Great Partisan of French Music’. But as Zohn demonstrates in Chapter 2 (‘Telemann's Mimetic Art: The Characteristic Overture-Suites’), the intellectual liveliness of German cities such as Leipzig, Frankfurt and Hamburg also provided fodder for his imagination, curiosity, wit and very great sense of fun. The overture-suite became an important vehicle for the musical depiction of current events and new ideas – some with hilarious characteristic titles (especially those of his Ouverture, jointes d'une Suite tragi-comique, twv55:D22).

Chapter 3, in Part II, examines Telemann's numerous concertos under a variety of subheadings (‘The Eisenach Concertos’; ‘Concertos for the Eloquent Oboe’; ‘Concertos alla francese’; ‘Telemann and the German Ripieno Concerto’; ‘The Late Frankfurt and Hamburg Concertos’), whilst ‘Telemann's Orchestras’ gives intriguing glimpses into the practices of leading ensembles from cities (Frankfurt and Hamburg) and distinguished courts (Eisenach, Darmstadt, Stuttgart and Dresden) where performances of his works took place. The problem encountered here (borne out in the discussion of the numbers of musicians Telemann used in various Hamburg performances) is that the longevity of Telemann's compositional career – which covered well over fifty years – meant that works from the early years of the eighteenth century continued to be performed throughout his lifetime by ever-expanding ensembles whose internal ratios and performance venues were gradually changing. Chapter 4, entitled ‘Bach's Debt Repaid with Interest: A Case Study of Transformative Imitation’, provokes thought about our current positions towards the practice of musical borrowing. Although Telemann's music was a great source of inspiration to others (especially Handel), Zohn focuses on J. S. Bach's borrowing of the opening theme from the second movement of Telemann's Concerto for oboe in G major twv51:G2/i for the Sinfonia to the cantata Ich steh mit einem Fuß im Grabe, bwv156. The history surrounding the complex unravelling of this particular ‘transformative imitation’ is intriguing indeed. Here Zohn explores the question of the line to be drawn between musical borrowing and plagiarism. Passages from the writings of Scheibe, Mattheson and Heinichen – amongst others – are cited in an attempt to explain contemporary attitudes.

Perhaps the most interesting section of Part III, which deals with Telemann's sonatas, concerns a section of Chapter 5 headed ‘When is a Quartet not a Quartet?’ (the genesis of this study appeared as ‘When is a Quartet not a Quartet? Relationships Between Scoring and Genre in the German Quadro, ca. 1715–40’, in Johann Friedrich Fasch und sein Wirken für Zerbst (Dessau: Anhaltische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1997), 263–290). The function of the bass instrument(s) in the sonata is shown to be a complex and under-investigated area of performance practice (Peter Walls tackled the issue in his book History, Imagination and the Performance of Music (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003)). A single bass part might simply double the bass line of a chordal continuo, but it also has the capacity – depending upon the skill of the player – to provide an independent voice so that, for example, a trio sonata could become a quartet. Zohn's Table 5.3 of obbligato bass quartets in Germany c1715–1740 demonstrates the importance of Dresden in the development of this practice. Here, perhaps, is the reason that in addition to three ‘Violono in Ripieno’ parts, one of the three figured ‘Basso Continuo’ parts was designated for the violone player ‘Mons: Selencka’ (Zelenka) in the Dresden performance materials (c1711) of Telemann's Concerto for two solo violins in E minor, twv52:e4 (D-Dl Mus. 2392-O-56). This independence of bass voices might also explain why the poem in praise of the Dresden Hofkapelle published in 1740 by the Dresden writer Johann Gottlob Kittel (see <http://digital.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/hd/content/titleinfo/10429>) refers to the amusement given to audiences by the playing of the three cellists (their instrument is named Bassett) of that ensemble – Giovanne Felice Maria ‘Piccinetti’, Agostino ‘Rossi’ and ‘Angelo’ Califano – two of whom (Piccinetti and Califano) were probably composition pupils of Zelenka. Might the enjoyment of listeners have arisen from hearing these cellists elaborate upon their bass parts in the manner suggested in the many music examples provided by Zohn (Neidt, Bourdelot and Gasparini, among others)? Telemann's contributions to the obscure Sonate auf Concertenart – a genre discussed in the eighteenth century by Scheibe alone – is the subject of Chapter 6. Such sonatas, written in the style of concertos and originating (it seems) at the Dresden court, appear to have arisen from the influence of the sonatas and concertos composed mainly by Vivaldi and collected by his former student (and later Dresden concertmaster) Johann Georg Pisendel.

Chapters 7 and 8 from Part IV (‘The Hamburg Publications’) reveal the full extent of Telemann's business acumen, his diverse compositional projects, extensive publishing activities, production methods and networks of friends and acquaintances. Adventures with musical styles – among them the galant and the ‘fantastic’ (stylus phantasticus) – are explored through the compositions of these Hamburg years. But it is Zohn's examination in the final chapter, ‘Telemann's Polish Style and the “True Barbaric Beauty” of the Musical Other’, that reveals the most about the composer. The composer's admiration for and fascination with musicians of different classes of society, or foreigners playing unusual instruments, is shown to be a genuinely enlightened response to the ‘Musical Other’. Whilst contemporaries might have employed exotic musical vocabularies in their galanteries, none held the style polonais in the same esteem, and none was as successful as Telemann in integrating its elements into his personal idiom. This magnum opus concludes with an Afterword in which Telemann's legacy as a composer of instrumental music is considered.

It is difficult to fault Zohn's eloquent and elegantly written examination of Telemann's instrumental music. Those who support the wish of the author that ‘the study of [Telemann's] works ought to be recognized first and foremost as its own rich reward’ (507) will welcome this volume as an important addition to the literature about a composer whose music continues to amuse, amaze and delight musicians and their audiences around the world.